Who is responsible for medical bills in a car accident / personal injury case?

Warsaw Personal Injury Lawyers – Vanderpool Law

How Will My Medical Bills Be Paid After An Accident?

If you have been injured in an accident you may find yourself asking “How are my medical bills going to get paid and who is responsible for paying them”? With the rising costs of healthcare, dealing with medical bills after an accident can cause a great deal of stress. The more serious the injuries in the case often mean the more serious the medical bills are going to be. Each case is very fact sensitive and an experienced personal injury lawyer can help walk you through your rights. Below is some general information that applies in many personal injury cases in Indiana.

Initially, medical bills will be your responsibility. However, this doesn’t mean that you will ultimately be on the hook for those bills. The bills you have incurred due to someone else’s negligence can be added to any settlement demand or introduced at trial asking the other party pay them.

Depending on the type of claim you have there may be insurance that will pay a portion of the medical bills up-front. This is commonly seen in automobile accidents where there is an insurance policy that contains a “med pay” provision. In these cases the insurance company will pay a set amount towards medical bills prior to the case being resolved.

In other cases where there is no med pay provision in the policy, the medical bills will first be submitted to your health insurance. Your health insurance will reduce the amount of the overall medical bills as they would in any other visit to a health care provider. Very rarely will health insurance completely wipe out the entire billed amount. The costs not covered by health insurance will be your responsibility until the case can get resolved.

In order to determine who will ultimately be on the hook for the medical bills or those amounts that you cannot afford to pay out of pocket, you will need to determine which party is responsible for the accident. To do this you must first learn all of the details in the given case and to determine which laws will apply in your particular situation.

Our personal injury lawyers will work with your providers to try to halt their collections tactics until the case is resolved. Often, providers will file liens for the services they have rendered if they are aware of a possible personal injury claim. These amounts will need to be paid back once the case is resolved but the providers will not be actively pursuing collections while the case is pending. It is important to obtain all of the information regarding the liens and other medical bills in order to fully evaluate your claim for recovery.

Once a case is settled our personal injury lawyers will work with you to minimize the amount of medical liens and other bills that need to be made to ensure that you are getting the maximum recovery.